Make the Most of Your NI Chamber Membership Ambition talks to Valerie McConville, head of business development, about how organisations and individuals can extract maximum benefit from membership of NI Chamber.
Valerie McConville, head of business development, NI Chamber.
As the many long-standing members of NI Chamber will know, the more involved you become, the more benefits you realise. We are in the business of helping your business to thrive and want to ensure that every single member, at every level, is making the most of the huge range of opportunities being part of our network brings. Helping business across the province to do just that is the job of Valerie McConville and her Business Development team. At NI Chamber, our approach to helping members starts with understanding them. “As a business support organisation, we are uniquely rooted in Northern Ireland – from our Board and Council, to the Executive team, NI Chamber is led and run by people who have a deep understanding of the particular challenges that local companies have faced historically, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and, of course, due to the enormous changes brought about by Brexit. “We have been helping companies to trade
locally and export internationally since 1783, so supporting business is in our DNA. NI Chamber is agile and fleet of foot – we pre-empt our members’ needs and establish new services quickly and effectively to meet these” says Valerie. That agility has come to the fore over the past 12 months, when services were quickly pivoted to reflect fast changing business needs. A swift response to the COVID-19 pandemic saw the organisation quickly roll out a raft of new initiatives to help members through a tumultuous year. “Our services have always focused on business growth: driving sales, innovation and exports. In 2020, almost overnight, our members’ priorities changed from growing their businesses to simply surviving, by navigating their way through the deepest economic recession on record. Supporting thousands of businesses in many different industries through that was no mean feat. And at the same time, the wider team was
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working extensively to build the capacity of our business support services ahead of Brexit, to be certain that we had the resources and expertise to provide a comprehensive advisory, training and documentation service.” While 2020 brought challenges for all, Valerie explains how, thanks to robust forward planning, the whole NI Chamber team worked to ensure that services in 2021 are right on the money, delivering exactly what members need now, in a way that is fully accessible to them. “Membership of NI Chamber has probably never been more relevant or beneficial and we want to ensure that all businesses are accessing all the services that are available to them. “As well as a suite of international support, including enhanced export documentation services, international trade advice, customs processing and technical training, NI Chamber offers members free access to a range of events on leadership, skills, energy and sustainability, business support programmes designed to help
